Articles | HSMAI Global

Doing More with Less: A Talent Two-Edged Sword

By Karen Wollard, Ed. D., CHDM, HSMAI Research Manager

One of the most common themes across all areas of hospitality, when it comes to talent, has been the need to do more with less. With the abrupt shutdowns caused by the pandemic in 2020, initial cutbacks were a necessity for surviving the crisis. Commercial teams sought profitable strategies, focusing on cutting costs while aiming to identify, attract, and book market segments that were still traveling. This often meant eliminating outside contractors or consultants or moving everything in-house, just as the markets became more unpredictable and volatile.

Suddenly, marketing teams were doing their own media planning, buying and execution, without depending on the expertise of agencies and research firms. Social media demand exploded, with some hotels using their platforms for transactions, not just as brand awareness vehicles. Salespeople were working to drive revenue, not spending as much time on reporting or administration, while often doing double duty in covering other departments.

Teams had to think differently and deploy people in new ways. This focus often came at the expense of human experience and connections. Long-term relationships with colleagues, clients, contractors, and partners were severed for many teams. One executive shared her view that it wasn’t about doing more with less; it was about prioritization, efficiency, and finding the flexibility to meet the constant changes. Cross-training became a necessity, often using internal resources or free training resources from partners such as Amadeus, Knowland, Cvent, Expedia, Google, STR, and more. Education on tools and data sources that could help find potential business was implemented across departments. Some hotel sales teams held trainings to encourage every person — front desk staff, bartenders, banquet captains, housekeeping and concierge, as well as operations management teams — to learn ways to assist in revenue generation.

Leveraging technology such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and OneNote helped teams stay connected. Salespeople learned how to create virtual site visits and property tours, as well as creative ways to sell their property in the absence of onsite visits. Demand for hybrid meeting resources forced group salespeople to create new video plans and packages. Workflow design applications were pulled into group meetings to search for ways to streamline clunky reporting and data flows. Some properties began using AI systems to score leads and prioritize best opportunities or propose alternative dates or patterns.

Hotel owners and asset managers at HSMAI roundtables shared lessons, beginning with the reality that profitability, not consumer satisfaction, drives decisions. In the interest of safety, guests were expected to follow new rules and accept huge cuts in amenities. In addition to checking themselves in remotely, guests didn’t receive housekeeping services or breakfasts, they couldn’t use the lobby or pool, and some complaints simply went unaddressed. The result was often the loss of any ancillary spend or loyalty development.

This concept of doing more with less became a two-edged sword, as workers insisted on compensation increases or other concessions to return to work, while burnout and turnover within their departments drove existing workers to seek work elsewhere. Some groups eliminated consulting and agency support to save expenditures, but found they lost the holistic view of comp sets and superior skills at strategy and execution. Still, other organizations chose to use agencies to fill gaps rather than bringing back employees. Revenue management saw a wide range of change. Some organizations that had always had singular onsite revenue managers found that remote work was possible, and that one remote worker could often manage several locations. Revenue management functions were also outsourced to consulting teams capable of managing dozens of sites.

Talent was redeployed to ensure multiple tasks were completed with less cost. Sales, revenue management, and reservations often were merged into a single team, serving multiple properties, according to Hospitality Upgrade. Sixty-nine percent of respondents in the McKinsey survey Building Workforce Skills at Scale indicated that skill-building was the most used approach for closing skills gaps, followed by redeploying remaining staffers.

Hotels have been hiring back staff who can fill multiple roles. Many learned through the small and nimble teams during the pandemic that when jobs are merged, people can fill multiple roles, boundaries (or silos) are eliminated, jobs get done, and situations can be met swiftly and effectively. Medallia Zingle’s hospitality employee experience report states that 61% of hospitality workers say they are having to do more with less, and according to Hospitality Upgrade, hoteliers are overwhelmingly recruiting (64%) and prioritizing (86%) interdisciplinary workers.

This is an excerpt from the HSMAI Foundation’s State of Hotel Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization Talent: 2020-2021 special report. To learn more about the HSMAI Foundation and its mission, visit the Foundation website.

Revenue Optimization Best Practices on Developing and Retaining Talent

Within the hospitality industry, the need for attracting, developing, and engaging commercial talent has been felt across the board. Among leaders within sales, marketing, and revenue optimization, talent-related issues have been rated highly in polls conducted by HSMAI, and many are still figuring out how to rebuild and reenergize their teams.

During the recent HSMAI Hotel Management Company Chief Revenue Officer Virtual Executive Roundtable, leaders in revenue management identified the following as the top three challenges facing commercial talent today:

Poaching from other industries
Compensation and benefits
Availability of qualified candidates already in the industry

In the new talent and work landscape of their corporate teams, these three themes were identified as top priorities among this group:

Mental health and well-being of employees
Doing more with less
Technology implications

When it comes to current team size and job openings, 39% of the polled revenue leaders said their team size has stayed the same, while 33% said it has decreased less than 25%. Seventy-eight percent said they have no current openings on their team.

The group also shared a plethora of best practices and tactics that they’re using to develop, recruit, and retain talent.

On developing talent:

Focus on constant training, including weekly one-on-ones, all-discipline team calls, monthly training, and other revenue-specific learning opportunities.
Show a clear career path and where people can go over time.
One roundtable member discussed hiring revenue generation specialists as an entry-level position with a specific development program where they work for regional directors. In about 18 months, they’re ready to be a revenue leader.
Another said within their company, revenue team members need to have five to six years’ experience, as the team manages eight hotels on average. They’re put through junior training, working side by side with the RM team. It takes 18 months to get through program, and they ramp up two hotels at time until they reach the eight hotels.

On recruiting talent:

Retain the talent you have, identify the bench strength within the organization, and make sure they’re getting the exposure they need to grow.
Lead with what the company’s strengths are such as a positive work environment, career pathing, flexibility, etc. You can recruit based on what you do for your people once they land with you.
Look internally. One group member discussed how they’ve seen several internal general managers interested in coming to revenue positions.

On retaining talent:

One group member discussed a work-life benefit that partially reimburses employees for vacation with family.
Create flexible work environments that offer hybrid or virtual opportunities.
Foster a positive culture and reinforce the team and organization’s vision.
Focus on challenging and enriching the team. Allow them to participate in different committees. Recognize them in front of their peers. Make sure they are heard.

HSMAI PERSPECTIVE: Cultivating an Environment of Inclusion

By Robert A. Gilbert, CHME, CHBA, President and CEO, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)

Over the past few years, one of the main focuses of the HSMAI Foundation has been to strengthen the talent pipeline to ensure the industry has the top sales, marketing, and revenue optimization professionals it needs to grow and thrive. Elevating the overall caliber and performance of these professionals is a critical piece of our mission, and we are constantly striving to provide the resources that drive our membership forward and encourage inventive and inclusive approaches to leadership.

As we near the end of March and the end of Women’s History Month, I’m reminded of our constant need to ensure the amplification of diverse voices and experiences within our sales, marketing, and revenue optimization teams. As our HSMAI Foundation State of Talent report points out, this is more important now than ever before — a people-first corporate culture and organizational values are necessary to attracting and retaining diverse talent.

As we all recognized the remarkable achievements of women in the world and in our industry this month, consider this McKinsey statistic, featured in the Castell Project’s Women in Hospitality Industry Leadership 2022 report: “One in three women has considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers — a significant increase from one in four in the first few months of the pandemic.” Burnout, among other challenges, has continued to be an issue. The good news, though, is that, according to the report, more women are coming into senior executive roles in hospitality. There is still work to be done, though, and these are factors we should continue to think about as we determine our best approach to tackling the challenges regarding talent.

Important to our drive toward inclusivity and belonging, HSMAI has adopted a code of conduct for future conferences and other events, developed by Castell Project. We are committed to the comfort and safety of all event attendees and encourage everyone to continue to uphold our standards of professionalism and ethics as we get back into the routine of travel and meeting in person.

The HSMAI Foundation also signed a memo of understanding with Women in Travel Thrive and will be commissioning a research project with them in 2022. We look forward to partnering with these organizations and others in the future to foster an environment where anyone can thrive, specifically in a career as a hospitality sales, marketing, or revenue professional.

Corporate and individual donations to support the HSMAI Foundation are welcome anytime at https://global.hsmai.org/foundation/support-the-hsmai-foundation/.

Profit Optimization and All the Perils that Ensue

By Tim Wiersma, CRME, Founder and Principal, Revenue Generation LLC

Price adaptations have rapidly moved from being a profit optimization lever to an essential tool for commercial survival in times of massive cost turbulences. Yet, price increases are often implemented quickly and in an indistinguishable manner (e.g., same increase throughout multiple markets or across multiple market segments). In addition, sales is often not thoroughly trained to ensure success in rolling out new pricing approaches.

Lack of preparation, analysis, and system modifications could lead to a strategy falling short of expectations. So, what do we do about it? The HSMAI Revenue Optimization Advisory Board offered their recommendations and insights on this topic.

Barriers to Profit Optimization

One of the barriers we see today as it relates to profit optimization would be the mix of business we’re faced with. If you’re a group house, over the past couple years, you’ve really had to shift gears and go after a customer you traditionally wouldn’t pursue — and maybe that’s less profitable than your traditional group customer, where they have the ancillary spend associated with it.

Another barrier is lack of understanding of the variable and fixed cost components associated with rooms, food and beverage, etc. Is this critical information making it to the decision makers on a day-to-day basis? And are they taking this information into account when making decisions? These are areas we need to consider.

Other factors that can be barriers to profit optimization include contracts with various distribution partners or agencies that may not always benefit us in terms of profitability. Then there are other variable costs such as labor, utilities, in-room amenities, linens, toiletries, etc., that can — if you’re not careful — lead to a negative category in terms of profitability.

Initiatives to Prevent Acceptance of Low or Negative Profit Margin Business

When it comes to avoiding acceptance of low or negative profit margin business, one advisory board member said, “Anytime we have to do anything with a piece of contract business — whether that be project business, an airline crew or anything like that — we have a tool we run it through. The one item people seem to forget about is variable cost. Labor, cost of supplies, etc., have gone up, and we used to use a factor of 3% year over year. Well, 3% isn’t going to cut it, so when we’re looking at multi-year pieces of business, that is the one thing I ensure makes sense. A piece of business may be OK right now, but maybe not for this time next year. And those are hard conversations that I’ve had with hotels.”

Another member offered, “It’s important to have alignment between the sales goals and the overall hotel strategy. That’s where it starts. Also, since we use revenue systems in many of the hotels, we started to ask them to look at their booking window outside of this year and begin thinking about goal setting for where we want the group business to be next year based on what we know now. We’re talking through high-level expectations, and then making sure that whatever processes the hotels have in place for group yielding, that they match those expectations so we can catch stuff before it goes on the books if it doesn’t make sense.”

Communicating Cost Factors with Franchise Owners

One topic the advisory board discussed was how revenue managers can communicate cost factors with franchise owners. One member said that although she’s spent many years talking about cost of sales and commission levels and how that impacts profitability, she’s not sure the message has “100% landed, but we’re getting there.” She continued, “When we’re thinking about rates, we must think about the fact that returning to 2019 levels can’t be the goal because the cost of sale has gone up since then. Sometimes, it takes a little courage to put your rates at a level you’ve never been able to get before. Some of that courage can come from conversations with revenue managers, but sometimes, we also need everyone who is speaking with that hotel to have the same level of understanding.”

“We have a lot of technology and a ton of tools,” another advisory board member added, “and we’re analyzing above-property, but how do you get an individual franchisee to do that when they’re dealing with real-life staffing issues, and they need everything on mobile because they’re running around? It’s up to us to educate them on cost-per-channel so they don’t make easy mistakes. It’s difficult enough trying to train the salespeople on using and understanding our tools, and showing how it could help their job, but it’s even more difficult with the franchisees. So, it should be a priority to continue that education as our tools evolve.”

Educating the Industry About Strategically Targeting Profitable RevPAR

Another challenge revenue managers face is how to go about educating the industry about strategically targeting profitable RevPAR. One advisory board member suggested that it starts with our own teams.

“Making sure our own teams are really knowledgeable is a good starting place,” she said. “And then making sure our partners in sales are knowledgeable, too. Some sales teams are rewarded on room nights, not profitable business. Profitability as part of the sales incentive plans would be helpful, but I don’t think we’re there yet. The more it can be built into those incentive plans, the more successful we’re going to be. So, when it comes to educating our industry about this, our internal teams should be where we start.”

Mental Health, Safety, and Well-Being: Taking Care of Talent

By Karen Wollard, Ed. D., CHDM, HSMAI Research Manager

As a result of the pandemic, a renewed focus on mental health and well-being of talent emerged. As the entire world masked up, social distanced, or sheltered in place at home, hoteliers grappled with finding ways to keep those who were still working safe. Quite suddenly, employees were examining their job security, their physical safety at work, their fear of getting sick, their worries over being replaced by technology, and their long-term career prospects.

New protocols were designed to keep people safe, while tight budgets and short staffs created stress, burnout, depression, insecurity, and fear. Wellness and mental health issues became essential considerations throughout the pandemic for those who remained in the workplace or transitioned to working remotely, as well as employees who had been furloughed or laid off.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2021 report discusses the effects of COVID-19:

Seven out of 10 workers are struggling or suffering.
80% are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work — at a cost of nearly 10% of GDP in lost productivity each year.
40% reported daily worry and stress, while 25% reported daily anger and sadness.

These problems are not new — negative emotions at work have been rising over the past decade — but the importance of measuring and managing mental health and well-being of employees is more crucial now than ever before.

Creating a Good Place to Work

McKinsey’s Better Bosses report demonstrates that relationships with supervisors and/or managers are the No. 1 factor in employee job satisfaction, a major determinant of employee well-being. The research shows that 75% of those surveyed said the most stressful aspect of their job was their immediate manager. Focusing on employee happiness can improve overall life satisfaction, while potentially increasing profitability and the organization’s overall health and well-being.

Good work organization, meaningful work, and psychological safety are key components to creating good places to work. Focusing on these can improve trust and confidence, which, in turn, encourage employee empowerment and engagement. There is long history to show that employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profits are inextricably linked. Organizations that wish to emerge from this crisis will focus on improving the relationships between managers and employees. Improving the employee experience improves the customer experience and can be significant in lowering turnover and increasing guest loyalty. In sales, marketing, and revenue management, there may be an opportunity to reinvent the way these teams interact and report, boosting workplace satisfaction while enhancing work quality.

In summer 2021, Hospitality Upgrade addressed talent issues and mental health and included one key takeaway: The pandemic irrevocably changed individual and team relationships. Fear, insecurity, and the awareness of alternative occupations have altered expectations. In an environment of perennial staffing shortages, employees want more job stability, competitive wages, assured hours and scheduling, fair benefits, and organized, transparent management. According to FAU’s research, appropriate pay increases and long-term job security were the most important expectations for encouraging commercial professionals to remain with their organizations.

Authentic, Servant Leadership Key to Navigating Talent Challenges Amid Pandemic

By Karen Wollard, Ed. D., CHDM, HSMAI Research Manager

Authenticity, accountability, and transparency — these characteristics have been most strongly associated with leaders who are successfully navigating the pandemic’s challenges, according to the HSMAI Foundation’s State of Hotel Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization Talent: 2020-2021 special report. As marketing, sales, and revenue optimization teams work toward being fully staffed again, hospitality talent expects these characteristics — and more — of their leaders at every level.

When the pandemic started, good leaders listened and adjusted, allowing the difference between what was and was not within their control to dictate the right actions to move forward. Hospitality leaders agree that the humanity of leadership is critical, along with humility and leading with a servant mentality.

Compassion and curiosity are key elements in leading organizations with strong manager/employee relationships. Leaders who embraced this acknowledged that their people were human first and addressed the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of the crisis. They also admitted they, too, were feeling the strains. Servant leaders look to make their team’s lives easier.

Authentic leadership was personified by the late Arne Sorenson, who was president and CEO of Marriott International, when he took to video in March 2020 to deliver the unwelcome news “face-to-face” with Marriott’s employees, stakeholders, and customers: “I can tell you that I have never had a more difficult moment than this one. There is simply nothing worse than telling highly valued associates — people who are the very heart of this company — that their roles are being impacted by events completely outside of their control.”

Before his passing in January 2021, Sheldon Adelson, CEO and chairman of Las Vegas Sands, called on corporate executives to maximize the number of employees and families they could help. He paid his 10,000 employees as though they were still working, even as the resorts were shuttered. Many large organizations raised funds to support furloughed workers and extended benefits. Others shared food, resources, job leads, support for unemployment applications, and more.

Managing Challenges at Every Level

Leaders at every level had to become comfortable with the uncomfortable and expect the unexpected, while moving decisively and empathetically. They had to keep a steady direction, while managing major crises, to help teams focus on priorities and find efficiencies wherever they could. Additionally, flexibility and resilience in the face of reduced bookings and mounting costs led some teams to creative solutions, including taking on new tasks such as stripping beds or helping prep food. One leader said this also brought out strengths in people that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

As change became a constant, leaders had to make decisions without full data and then constantly reevaluate as new information changed the landscape. Managers had to be flexible as their employees struggled with homeschooling their children, caring for sick relatives, and learning new technologies and techniques to do their jobs. Inflexible managers who tried to stick to the rules or enforce one rule on many created stress and burnout.

With their data and insights, as well as experience representing their brands, chief marketing officers were invaluable strategists during the pandemic, determining the profile of the “new” guest, devising plans on increasing occupancy, and crafting unique messaging to address those who were still traveling. In addition, chief human resources officers and chief commercial officers had to collaborate to determine how to move forward. While some organizations chose to furlough sales, marketing, and revenue staffers because there was no business, others combined the teams, encouraging them to work together to figure out how to fill rooms at a profit. These early decisions continue to reverberate as the industry rebounds. General managers are still working to determine the balance as they employ new workers and continue to deploy existing staff across multiple roles.

Broader Leadership Issues

Along with the pandemic came additional crises that demanded leadership attention:

Stockholder demands for bold strategies and aggressive measures. Investors and owners, especially hotel owners, have seen nearly two years of losses, and many markets are still slow to rebound.
Stakeholder capitalism — the idea that business serves not only shareholders but consumers, suppliers, workers and the greater society — has gained prominence as the COVID-19 crisis demonstrated the interconnections between business and society, according to McKinsey.
New focuses on social justice and sustainability, and environmental challenges from wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. From George Floyd’s death sparking social unrest to record-breaking weather and climate challenges, the pandemic was just one disaster on top of others.

There have been extensive changes in the C-suites of many hotel companies, as leadership continues to grapple with enormous business pressures. These issues will be part of what marketers and revenue managers will be adding to their environmental scanning as they view the post-COVID landscape.

A Conversation on Compensation Programs, KPIs, and Forecasting in Revenue Optimization

HSMAI recently hosted its Hotel Management Company Chief Revenue Officer Virtual Executive Roundtable, including revenue leaders from Chesapeake Hospitality, CoHo Services, Concord Hotels, Crescent Hotels & Resorts, Crestline Hotels & Resorts, First Hospitality, Highgate, Hotel Investment Services, Inc., HVMG, Kessler Collection, Marcus Hotels, McNeill Hotel Company, North Central Group, Pacifica Hotels, Peachtree Hotel Group, Prism Hotels and Resorts, Real Hospitality Group, Shaner Hotels, Stonebridge Companies, and VRI Americas. The roundtable was presented in partnership with ZS.

The group discussed a wide range of topics affecting revenue optimization, including forecasting data points, compensation programs, evolving KPIs, food and beverage pricing, and more. The following provides a look into some of the takeaways and insights shared, as well as a snapshot of ZS’s presentation on compensation programs.

Positive Trends

Roundtable participants said they have noticed the following positive trends so far this year:

ADR has maintained high values
Continued expansion of leisure pattern
Strong direct bookings returning
Beginning of business travel recovery
Strong future pickup

Business Travel

When it comes to the rebound of business travel, revenue optimization leaders are monitoring various elements:

Midweek occupancy
BT/NEG segment performance, plus GDS channel performance
Arrival and departure patterns as well as trip length
Local restrictions easing
TSA pass-throughs midweek

When describing the challenges of the return of business travel and relationship management, one group member expressed, “When talking with our sales leaders recently, we asked how many of their BT contacts are the same people they were working with in 2019 and, overwhelmingly, it’s all new people they’re talking to. It’s a totally new client base they have to build from scratch because every industry has had turnover during the last couple of years.”

Forecasting

On the topic of forecasting, roundtable participants said these datapoints are the most insightful for their total demand forecast:

Pace progression
Booking window expansion
Focusing on short-term pickup trends
Understanding pace by segment and channel
K. recovery trends
Recent COVID variant recovery trends

Key Performance Indicators

In this new and ever-evolving landscape we’re in today, revenue optimization leaders say these KPIs are the most important for them:

RevPAR, ADR growth and GOP
Staff retention
There’s still a big focus on comparing to 2019
Pricing increases and changing food costs
OTA Insight: Revenue Insight

Food and Beverage

Since the start of the pandemic, participants said they have done the following to manage pricing for F&B:

Implemented limited menus and shorter hours
Meeting room rental increases
Dynamic pricing through use of QR codes and digital menus to update options in real time
Increased market items
Educating event team on profit margins so they can sell the right items

Another issue related to F&B, as one revenue leader expressed, is staffing. “Some of our hotels are delayed in reopening food and beverage because we can’t find the staffing. For a while, it was housekeeping staffing we were challenged with, but now it’s F&B and being able to find cooks.”

Incentive Compensation Programs

ZS presented on best practices for developing an incentive compensation program for directors of revenue management. These programs are important because they:

Align the team to the revenue strategy
Motivate people to implement strategy
Reward performance and achievement of strategic goals
Attract and retain talent to maintain and grow a strong company culture

ZS discussed that all incentive plans have advantages and disadvantages, and that the right plan type for your company will depend on the main objective you want to address. ZS recommends goal-based plans for property revenue management teams in hospitality that are aligned with strategy, fiscally responsible, fair, and simple.

Revenue Optimization Leaders Talk Forecasting, Owner Expectations and Challenging Demand Anomalies

While some challenges persist in the hospitality industry, things are looking up in certain areas, as revenue optimization leaders discussed during the HSMAI Brand Chief Revenue Officer Virtual Executive Roundtable. Participants included professionals from: Accor, Auberge Resorts, Best Western International, Choice Hotels International, Dream Hotel Group, G6 Hospitality, Graduate Hotels, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, IHG, Loews Hotels & Co, Margaritaville Enterprises, Omni Hotels & Resorts, Outrigger Hospitality Group, Preferred Hotel Group, Red Roof, Rosewood Hotel Group, Sonesta Hotels, and The Venetian Resort. The roundtable was presented in partnership with The Hotels Network and Uplift.

During this meeting, the leaders in revenue optimization discussed what they’re looking forward to in travel, the vital components of forecasting today, how owner expectations have recently changed, and more. The following shows the insights shared among the group.

Q&A: How would you rate these challenges facing commercial talent in hospitality?

Q&A: In the new talent and work landscape of your corporate team, which of these themes are priorities for you personally in 2022?

Q&A: What are the most vital components of your forecasting today?

Brand makeup
Business and market intelligence
Recent booking trends
Customer sentiment data; flight data
International government travel changes
More understanding that forecasting is an imperfect science
Daily COVID trends
Cancellation trends

Q&A: What demand anomalies are your biggest challenge?

Weekday and shift to shoulder nights
Short-term cancels
Unpredictable information from CDC
Airlines still not at full capacity
Compression events are so variable
Higher cancellation rates due to more flexible cxl policies needed

Q&A: How have owner expectations changed in the last six months?

They’re still reluctant to spend money to make money
Expecting ADR increases to fix all problems
Trying to find ways to make up for cost increases
More confidence with the operator based on where we came from as demand returns
They’re looking at industry forecasts geared toward investments and expect the same results
They believe that higher profit margins should be sustainable without increasing staff

Q&A: What are the biggest issues around staffing your team that are still keeping you up at night?

Talent getting poached by outside industries in droves
More analytically minded folks who understand big data
The rise in starting salary
Lack of technical skills from within the industry
Preventing burnout of team
Building a talent bench in case of sudden departures
Keeping pay increases up with the high inflation and consumer costs

The Chief Loyalty Officer Perspective: Managing Technology, Fraud and Employee Incentives

By Frances Moffett, Editorial Content Director, HSMAI

HSMAI hosted leaders in loyalty from Accor, BWH Hotels & Resorts, Outrigger, Red Roof, The Venetian Resort, and Wyndham Hotels during its recent Chief Loyalty Officer Virtual Executive Roundtable. The group addressed several topics, including the impact of travel disruptions on status, managing fraud, employee incentives for enrolling guests in programs, and the challenges they’re facing regarding finding talent. Here’s how they responded to questions about these pressing issues.

Q&A: How have you addressed travel disruptions and the impact on status?

Extended status into 2022
Reduced the night requirement
Extended points expiration
Removed formal tiers

Q&A: What are best practices in managing customer data platform implementation?

“Make sure to have a clear data strategy and ownership within the organization.”
“Follow good project management [best practices] and have constant communication with all stakeholders.”
“We deployed a CDP [in] 2020. It’s a very powerful tool and a tremendous application that requires a certain level of skill within the organization to manage. We have a vendor we work with, and it’s allowed us to automate a ton of our communications to our guests throughout the entire journey. We can automate a variety of those communications, and we leverage it to trigger messages to guests while they’re at our resort, based on certain activities.”

Q&A: How are you managing engagement with the new iOS privacy standards?

“[Our strategy] hasn’t really changed, except for rethinking trigger attributes. We’re tracking the opens blocked — the people who have chosen to opt out of being identified. We get that number from our ESP, and they pull them out of our open rates. Of course, our open rates are going down, but our click rates have not changed; in fact, they’ve got a little stronger. We had a big hit around October when early adopters were changing those settings, but now it’s kind of leveled out.”

Q&A: What types of fraud are you seeing? How are you managing it?

“We’re seeing account takeovers and property front-desk fraud. To manage it, we have separate internal teams focused on it and work with a third party to access AI tools.”
“Sometimes we’ll see an individual, maybe a friend of the account holder or someone who knows them, who will go in and take over the account and try to make redemptions. We look at every redemption and compare things such as an email change on the last day, and then we just block the redemption. And they don’t call us, so we know they weren’t supposed to be doing it.”
“This doesn’t happen very often, but when big points are involved, sometimes we’ll see friends or family sharing an account, and then the person who owns the account will claim that someone hacked into it and stole all their points. Except it was someone they knew, and the whole thing was planned.”

Q&A: What are best practices in training/incentives for employees to consistently enroll guests?

Q&A: How would you rate these challenges facing commercial talent in hospitality?

Q&A: In the new talent and landscape of your corporate team, which of these themes are priorities for you personally in 2022?

The Importance of Corporate Culture and Values in Finding New Talent

By Karen Wollard, Ed. D., CHDM, HSMAI Research Manager

As we look toward post-pandemic recovery, corporate culture will dictate how teams can function and thrive. This is even more important now that four generations are in the workforce for the first time ever.

Human resources issues moved to the forefront in March 2020 when the world shut down. HSMAI held global chief human resources executive roundtables in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North America in summer and fall 2020, finding that experiences were eerily similar around the world: People were doing more with less, managing low team morale, quickly implementing new technology for virtual communication and more. One of the bright spots was the way HR leaders were quickly elevated to C-suite levels as the pandemic unfolded. The quick handling by capable HR teams who had the support of senior management was a huge differentiating factor in the outcomes of massive furloughs and layoffs.

As corporate commercial teams shrank and began remote work, they had the monumental tasks of maintaining communication, enhancing teamwork, and ensuring wellness. For those associates who remained, flattened decision-making hierarchies made quick and nimble responses to crises possible. Silos crumbled and everyone pitched in to keep whatever business was available booked. Resilience and flexibility became essential, traits that were more easily adopted in organizations that valued teamwork. Transparency and compassion proved to be key factors in reputation management.

Communication and consideration mattered enormously to those who were laid off, those sent home to work remotely, and those who stayed. Organizations with people-first cultures made impossible decisions without betraying employees’ trust, while those who felt they were treated unfairly lost the faith. Hospitality organizations have long considered themselves to be in the people business, and this belief was put to the test. As one employee offered, after nearly three decades working with one organization, they were terminated (in writing) with “no advanced planning, no crisis prevention of any sort, and no care or concern for [my] well-being and long-term status of [my] leadership.” Transparency in the face of unforeseen events was most effective in organizations where leaders were trusted to take employee and guest well-being into account. Empathy will be remembered long after the rebound occurs.

Across the HSMAI C-level roundtables in 2020 and 2021, executives consistently reported that few (or fewer than other departments) commercial professionals were furloughed or laid off, or they were among the first to be recalled. FAU’s hospitality research found that even among these departments, less than 13% felt the industry had protected its workers better than other industries.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Intergenerational Collaboration

Two corporate culture issues of particular importance to commercial professionals are likely to return to the forefront as employment rebounds: DEI and workplace collaboration among four different generations.

DEI efforts were moving forward in many organizations as the pandemic arose. For sales, marketing, and revenue management professionals, women represented nearly half of all VP- to chief-level positions and were well represented at the director levels, holding more than 60% of current positions in 2021, according to the Castell Project’s 2021 Women in Hospitality Industry Leadership study. Yet, 57% of all those laid off in the pandemic were women, so it will take time to see what the ultimate impact might be.

In 2021, a task force of the HSMAI Americas Marketing Advisory Board surveyed more than 70 sales, marketing, and revenue management leaders from a range of organizations and found that nearly 55% had an existing DEI initiative or committee. These efforts ranged from executive education to comprehensive training for all colleagues. The HSMAI Foundation continues to work with several organizations who are researching, making recommendations, and fostering success in addressing DEI efforts, specifically across the commercial professions.

The reality of four generations (baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z) in the workforce for the first time in history adds a new dimension to the challenges of corporate values. In sales, marketing, and revenue positions, senior managers tend to be baby boomers and Gen Xers, both generations that have spent most of their working lives in offices, with clear work and leadership policies. Millennial and Gen Z professionals seem more interested in fluid structures and policies. The need to recalibrate existing logarithms, adapt existing systems to new realities, and the enormous changes in social media and big data challenge many commercial professionals, particularly those who aren’t digital natives. This is a consideration for managers as they work to navigate these challenges.

One highlight in developing supportive cultures among different generations has been the concept of “reverse mentoring,” which pairs more experienced workers with new professionals, often with the intent to work together on technology challenges. The Foundation will be watching for success stories and best practices with this approach, as well as other learning, development, and teamwork solutions.

Aside from DEI and intergenerational collaboration, the pandemic has heightened awareness of the importance of accommodating employees with familial responsibilities, supporting those with heightened risk factors, and addressing varying levels of need for job security. As workplaces redevelop, organizations will have to work with their employees to determine their needs and foster an environment of inclusion and understanding.

Corporate culture will dictate how teams will function and thrive. “Companies that aren’t aligned with the work-life needs of their employees will continue to see a migration of talent,” wrote author Connie Steele in her book “Building the Business of You.” The days of celebrating those employees who are best able to tolerate the pain of overdemanding days, burnout, multiple jobs, short staffing, and unending demands may soon be over.

As we rebuild, there is an opportunity for a cultural reset and renewal. Honest assessment of organizational values, the actions of its leaders, and the future expectations of guests, employees, owners, and other stakeholders are crucial. Organizations must ask: What does it take to be extraordinary? How can we listen and connect more? One leader told us that the future is about more than just booking rooms; it is choosing the mix of guests and ensuring purpose and kindness are shown throughout the property. There is a renewed commitment to mentoring and growing the next generation of hoteliers who know how to drive the business and are intensely passionate about the guest experience.